


to be so alone.

by clickingkeyboards



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27007267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Nobody is to blame for Fallingford except from the obvious, but Bertie Wells doesn't see it that way. In his eyes, there is only one person to blame: a policewoman who has profited from the scandal.He knows that he is being unfair, and cruel, searching for somebody to hurt. However, when he is asked to defend himself against accusations that could lengthen Stephen's sentence, hours of drinking afterwards can't stop him from letting Lucy know exactly what he thinks of what she has done to his family.After all, it is perhaps his only chance before he is locked up for love.This is my 100th fic and I am very excited about that fact!
Relationships: Bertie Wells & Lucy Mountfitchet, Felix Mountfitchet/Lucy Mountfitchet
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	to be so alone.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritesEveryBlueMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritesEveryBlueMoon/gifts), [Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Give_Me_A_Karking_KitKat/gifts), [sunshinedflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinedflower/gifts), [AwkwardSauce0602](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardSauce0602/gifts), [cerystrieswriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerystrieswriting/gifts), [likeadeer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeer/gifts), [LostInFiction13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostInFiction13/gifts), [iyzze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iyzze/gifts), [hermionewrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hermionewrites/gifts), [TisBee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisBee/gifts), [Finalgirl_ish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finalgirl_ish/gifts), [celestialskies (littlebirdrocks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebirdrocks/gifts).



Lucy Livedon was not scared of many things. At Fallingford, she had stormed into the bedroom of the most powerful man in the country and ripped into him for making her job so difficult. She had threatened a possible killer, and testified against him across a courtroom for hours. On the Orient Express only the week before, she had watched as three teenagers that she couldn’t protect solved a murder and did her job for her.

One thing that did scare her, however, was a knock on the door of her room at an odd hour of the morning, and not because she didn’t know who it was. 

It was obvious.

That day, their session in court had ended with the judge, in his gravelly tones, saying, “Discussion tomorrow begins on a possible additional crime to lengthen the accused’s sentence. Evidence of the sodomy accusations should be brought to the table. Mr Bampton and Master Wells, separately prepare your defenses.”

Unprompted, as she stood beside Felix and straightened her dull blazer, Bertie had turned to her and looked at her with wide eyes as if… well, as if he wanted to kill her.

He was not wrong to be worried, Lucy would admit that. She was a law enforcement official who, at Fallingford, had been something more than suspicious of Bertie and his best friend, raised her eyebrows at the idea of their relationship being strictly platonic. Given that she stayed on the same floor as the pair for the entire week before Curtis arrived and the holidays went to hell, she had heard strange things at odd hours of every night. Several times, she had happened upon the laughing boys dragging each other up and down the stairs late in the evening with whispers to, “Be quiet, Steph! You’ll give us away!” Once, just once, she had glanced to her left while on a hunt for wherever the troublesome girls had got to, and caught sight of a hasty kiss as the two of them ducked out of sight on the servant’s stairs. 

Not that she believed that Bertie would hurt her to ensure that he was not outed in front of a jury. However, she was wary. She had arrived back in the country four days ago and she could count on one hand the amount of times that she had seen Bertie Wells sober. He wasn’t always actively drunk, but there was always something in his eyes that made him look as if half of him was somewhere quite different, leagues away from the courtroom that he stood in. It looked as if, while his body was present in the courtroom and his voice was coming out in an emotionless tone as he tried not to look at the killer across the courtroom, his mind was months and miles away in Fallingford, kissing a ginger boy in a stairwell without a care in the world. 

Furious fists pounded on the door of her hotel room once again, and she could stand it no longer. Wrapped in a Japanese silk dressing gown and brushing her brown hair back over her shoulder, she walked to the door with more confidence than she felt and threw it open, stumbling backwards as if she were a trainer letting a wild animal into the ring. It was just who she had expected to see, and dreaded the presence of. 

Bertie looked wrecked. His shirt was rumpled and half-unbuttoned, his jacket was barely on his shoulders. Golden hair was sweat-slicked and sticking up every which way, and his cheeks were flushed red against his pale skin. When he stumbled against the doorframe, as if dancing a failing waltz with somebody unlovingly violent with their touches, his half-lidded eyes snapped open wide and wild, blue with astonishing brightness, as if glowing in the dark.

In the way that she felt danger on Felix’s skin when she daringly clutched his hand, she felt the alcohol radiating from Bertie with every breath he took. It was as if she was dealing with a wild animal, waving a red rag at a bull. “Bertie,” she said in a level voice, and she sounded calmer than she felt, “are you alright?”

“Please,” he gasped, more of a rush of air than any distinct syllables. He swallowed, almost like his voice was falling down his throat, and tried again. “Please, don’t tell anybody. I… I can’t… please, just… I’ll do anything you like, but please don’t… I can’t end up in there, not with… with him.”

“What do you mean?” she asked softly, stepping back against as he stumbled forward, standing awkwardly and staring at her as if he didn’t recognise the simplicity of kindness.

He let out a sound that could be either a groan or a gasp. “No. No, you must know. You know because… I watched! I watched you— how you threatened him, so dangerous. Like you wanted us hurt. He told me after, after that, before he… before he tried to hurt you. He tried to hurt you.”

Suddenly, she grasped what he wanted, made head and tail of the slurred begging. Desperately wanting to reach out and comfort the slurring boy, she instead stood back with one hand clutching her dressing gown, the other settled over her heart. “I’m not going to—”

With a sudden shout, he crowed, “But you will! You— oh, you will! You say you won’t but… people like you, you hurt people like me. You hurt the… the sodomites, the homosexuals, the people who perform ‘unnatural acts’. You— you hunt people like me, you… _prey_ on us.”

Lucy was too astonished to speak. There was something about Bertie’s certainty that made her think, wonder if she truly was as wicked as Bertie made her out to be. It was nonsense and she knew it: she wouldn’t dare harm a young man as innocent as him. However, she took a second to peruse the crowd that she had fallen into with her job, wondering if _they_ would enjoy finding out people like Bertie, watching them get their comeuppance for pleasure.

“And the worst part is that _you_ shouldn’t even know,” Bertie continued, strict and shouting through his slurring words. “It’s family business, you know. And you aren’t… no matter how much my uncle… he wants it but you aren’t. You’re no family of mine.” He spat the last word, down towards the ground in the midst of a lurching stumble.

“Bertie,” Lucy said, the word rising on a breath as she reached out for him, not knowing what else to do. She had comforted bleeding gang members who had pressed guns to her head two seconds before, sobbing little girls wondering why Daddy wasn’t moving, and grieving schoolboys unable to shed tears, and somehow this drunken young man was more important than them all. 

He reeled back as if struck. “Nobody… NOBODY should know,” he panted, sounding like he had just run a marathon. “Nobody should know about this, about something that never meant anything and meant everything because that’s how these things… these things, how they work. It’s nobody’s business but mine and his and this should just be a fractured rela— fractured dalliance— fractured… fractured _thing_ that I deal with alone because it happened, it did, and I don’t want to have to lie. I used to be proud of it, of him and I. Ludicrously proud, so proud of us that we would take risks. And now… now this.”

It felt like being at the pictures. Lucy was at once all too close to the situation and all too far, wanting to reach out and touch him but hitting a wall that stretched up between them. Riding back into yelling, Bertie shouted and pounded his fist against the wall, “This should _never_ have happened! If it wasn’t for my mother, for Curtis, and _you_ . You, you bitter _witch_. It was your job to catch Curtis and you didn’t manage it, nor before he could die and Stephen was to blame and… You could have STOPPED IT if you weren’t so fucking CAUTIOUS. You’re cautious to arrest a wicked and awful man like Curtis but would gladly throw Stephen and I to the dogs!”

The door opened. Silhouetted by the landing lights was Felix, Lucy’s avenging angel. He looked between his nephew, flushed and distressed and red in the face from shouting and screaming and swearing, and Lucy, terrified and white and clutching at her robe. They both looked wrecked in different ways, both distraught and desperate and clamouring for help. 

He chose Lucy.

Bertie continued his tirade, fuelled by Felix’s entrance. He didn’t seem to care if the whole of London heard his cries because nothing seemed to matter to him anymore, except the fact that Felix — who had promised to protect him — had just taken the side of an officer. Somebody who would take pleasure from hurting him.

“It’s not fair,” he said, voice dangerously low and measured as he stumbled against the wall, supporting himself with a slowly bruising hand. “It’s not fair that I have to defend myself against who I love.”

“Bertie,” Felix cautioned. He was drunk, slurring, making no sense. What he needed was a dash of strict common sense. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“IT’S NOT FAIR!” Bertie yelled, and Felix was flung back to when he was much younger. All at once, he remembered being eighteen, sitting on the landing in Fallingford and staring at his four-year-old nephew screaming about his parents punishing him when they fought. He remembered being eighteen and not having a clue what to do. Then he blinked, and he was thirty-two and his nephew was eighteen, and he still hadn’t a clue what to do. “IT’S NOT FAIR THAT DAISY HAS HAZEL, THAT MOTHER HAD CURTIS, THAT YOU HAVE EACH OTHER.”

He paused, took heaving breaths, stumbled against the wall and retched dryly. “It’s not fair,” he whispered, slurring and hissing all at once, “not when I have lost the person that meant all the world to me.”

“And,” he continued, the words falling from his mouth like the reams of scandalous letters he was so afraid Lucy would find, “it is worse than death. This is so much worse, in a way that you will never understand. Mother can ignore what Curtis did because it doesn’t damn matter anymore. I have to live with this, and I’ll have to bear this for the rest of my life. This is worse than death, because death is something people cope with. Bearing a fact that they loved a murderer… normal people don’t have to deal with that. And before all… all _this_ , I used to be NORMAL.”

“Bertie,” Felix said, in a tone much stricter than he felt like being, “I know that… well, that I _don’t._ I am well aware that I can never understand you. But this isn’t a rational response.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Uncle Felix, I am not a government agent. I’m not… like you. I’m not ready for this, for murder, for death, for my sister’s life on the line. I’m not prepared for this. You’re… you’re however old, you’ve been eighteen. You’ve been my age and you’ve never had to deal with this. Nobody has a bloody rational response to this, though I’ve been perfectly fucking rational so far.” Rational suddenly had a very different meaning to Felix, talking not of being measured and calm and sober, but instead being the picture of Bertie drinking the hours away to stop himself doing some absolutely idiotic.

Gasping out the words now, as if every last one was spoken on time borrowed from a murderer’s life, Bertie spoke in shouts swooping into whispers as he said, “Do you know what it takes to stand across from… from _him_ in a courtroom every day, to testify that he’s a killer while he begs me with his eyes to let him go? Do you know how it feels to know every thought inside the head of a killer, to understand why they did it? _No_ , no, you don’t.”

All at once, Bertie took a breath and finally stopped talking, and burst into wretched, violent tears.

It was a horrible, harsh, jarring sound. He curled in on himself, clutching his jacket with shaking hands and doubling over, one hand pressed to his face as he gasped and choked on sobs. Through it all, Felix thought that he could hear Bertie begging for help from a killer.

“Bertie,” he said as clearly as he could, and then he was rushing to hold his nephew, who was no more than a crying child once he reached him.

Felix couldn’t believe that he had ever been frightened.

Shaking against him with sobs, Bertie wrapped his arms around his uncle and gripped the back of his jacket like a lifeline. “I just…” He took a deep breath, shuddering but solid. “Uncle Felix, I just want Stephen back.”

“He did awful things to you, Bertie,” Felix whispered, rubbing a soothing hand over his back. “He has done horrible things, really hurt people. You can’t—”

“ _I know_ ,” Bertie gasped, sounding utterly wrecked and wretched, the picture of a desperate man. “But… he wasn’t always as bitter and cruel as he is now. He— he would laugh and he would joke, and he would kiss me and hold me and tell me that he loved me and…” Through a sob, he managed, “And I’ve never loved anybody the way I love him, and I’m _still_ in love with him and he loves me too and I just want him _back_.”

As he spoke the final word, he broke down into another bout of heaving tears. His words were almost indistinguishable from the groaning of a man in pain from yelling and sobbing and drinking, and Felix felt saturated with somebody else’s tears. “I just want it all back to normal,” he jerkily begged. “ _Please_.”

Whispering against the top of Bertie’s head, Felix said, “I’ve never promised you that I can make all the world better for you, Bertie, only that I can stop your world from getting worse.”

“I used to think,” he mumbled, swallowing hard and coughing violently, gasping to recover himself and letting another sob escape, “that adults knew everything. But I’m eighteen and… I just feel lost. And alone. I’m so _alone_.”

As severe as he dared to be, Felix straightened up and pulled away, gripping his nephew by the shoulders and saying, “Bertie, you need to sleep. I promise that Lucy isn’t going to say a word against you. I know her well, and even if I didn’t, I simply wouldn’t let her. We will fight against any accusations and force them to accept that they’re false. Now—”

Felix led Bertie from the room, stumbling and soothed by soft reassurances. Lucy stumbled to the door and pushed it closed, leant her head against the cool wood, and started to cry. 


End file.
